I am indebted to
Laurel Scheaf
who inspired this conversation.
There are moments of perfection which, when they occur,
validate the
workability
of Life. When a moment of perfection occurs, although it's surprising,
it's not a surprise. That's subtle: "surprising" yet "not a
surprise" ... because of course
Life works!
(even if we have to be reminded of it from time to time) and
this, a moment of perfection, is the evidence.
There are predictable moments of perfection and there are
unpredictable moments of perfection. Interestingly enough,
while moments of perfection don't occur with any reliability,
they can be anticipated. They can be expected. They can be
predicted. Here are examples of two of my favorite predictable
moments of perfection:
Synchronicity:
I'm driving, singing along with a favorite song on the radio. The
road enters a tunnel. With diminishing reception, the radio becomes
increasingly staticky until the song on the radio is
completely unintelligible. I keep on singing, only without
accompaniment - the song on the radio is now just crackle and hiss.
I get to the chorus as the car nears the end of the tunnel, singing
solo
"When I'm home, everything seems to be ri-ight, when I'm
home
..." and just at that exact moment the
radio antenna picks up reception again, and from the speakers
perfectly in sync with me singing, comes "...
feeling you holding me tight, tight yeah! It's been a
hard day's night
..." and I'm harmonizing along with the renewed song on the
radio again, both of us exactly in sync with each other
again, with neither of us, not me nor the song on the radio, having
missed a single beat during the outage.
Intentionality:
I'm leading a five day seminar for an enterprise in the state of
Arkansas. It's certainly the biggest enterprise in Arkansas. But more
than that, it's not only one of the biggest enterprises in these
United States: it's one of the biggest enterprises on
the planet.
At this location alone there are twelve thousand employees. I arrive
early on the morning of the first day to get set up. Their parking
lot, which is about the size of six football fields, is empty
at this early hour, so I park right in front of the door to the
building. I'm assigned a support person, a liaison to
clear me through security and to get me whatever I need. There's a
lot for us to talk about. We agree to discuss most of it over lunch
which we schedule for three consecutive days.
On the first day we drive into the town for lunch in my rental car,
and when we return, of course the parking lot is totally full. At the
far edge of the parking lot as we enter, she sees one empty space,
about a four hundred yards walk to the front door. "Park there" she
says, "the lot is full.". Politely declining, I say "We'll find one
closer" and I continue driving toward the front door. We pass another
empty spot. "Park there!" she says, excited to find
another one, "the lot is full.". This one's about a two hundred yards
walk to the front door. I say "We'll find one closer.". I find one
right at the front door. I've driven by hundreds
of parking spaces, all full, and I find the empty one I want right at
the front door. She says nothing.
The next day we return from lunch and the parking lot is full. She
sees a space at the edge of the lot. "You better take that one" she
says, "the lot is full.". I say "We'll find one closer" and again, I
find one right at the front door. Again she says nothing. On the
third day we return from lunch and the parking lot is full. She sees
a space near the edge of the lot. "You should take that one" she
says, "there are no other spaces. The lot is always full after
lunch.". I say "We'll find one closer.". Again I find the one empty
space I want. It's the space closest to the front door. Of course it
is.
This time she turns to me, rapt and intrigued, and asks me "How do
you do that?".
If predictable moments of perfection are evidence
life works,
un-predictable moments of perfection provide exponentially more
evidence. Arguably, as in my two examples above, I play a part in
causing ie in intending predictable moments of perfection.
But it's the unpredictable moments of perfection, the so-called
miracles in Life in which you don't play any part at all,
that is to say in which you play a drastically diminished
part, which provide irrefutable evidence
Life works,
and which validate
who you really are.
It's an unpredictable moment of perfection when I come home late at
night to discover
a herd of cows waiting to
greet me
at my front door. They could be anywhere on the six
hundred and fifty acre ranch. Yet they're here! Right
outside my front door. It's an unpredictable moment of perfection when
out of the blue I get an e-mail from an old friend I've
been thinking about but for whom I have no contact information. It's an
unpredictable moment of perfection when I'm flipping through the one
dollar sell out DVDs at the local video store, and I come
across one of a kind of my favorite childhood movie of fifty years ago,
Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon about which no one
hears anymore. It's an unpredictable moment of perfection when I forget
to set my alarm clock but I wake up anyway, rested and refreshed, one
minute before the alarm would have gone off. It's an unpredictable
moment of perfection when completely unexpectedly (like when I'm
waiting for a bus at the bus stop) I have a peak experience, a "high
noon" of the spirit when all my beliefs and concepts and
positionality are stretched so thin they simply can't hold me back, and
I get a clear uninterrupted vision of the real possibility
of my life.
One way you could regard these unpredictable moments of perfection,
these miracles if you will, is they're islands of
perfection in the sea of Life's unworkability.
They're great when they happen! They provide respite from
the ongoing unworkability if you will. You could also say they
show up
as Life's thanks and rewards for staying the course ...
staying the course, that is to say, in the sea of Life's
unworkability.
What's a surer-footed way of regarding these unpredictable
moments of perfection, these miracles, is they're not islands of
perfection in the sea of Life's unworkability. Rather, as this
conversation speaks them, they're portholes of perfection
in a boat of unworkability through which you look out onto
the sea of Life's inherently magnificent
workability.
In other words, unpredictable moments of perfection provide glimpses of
what's really possible. They provide insight into Life's
workability
rather than being exceptions to Life's
unworkability.
